The Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal on April 28 said that it will hear Bank of India's plea to admit Future Retail under insolvency on May 12.
The counsel for Future Retail told the bench that the company needs more time to file a reply to the Bank of India's petition. The bench was presided by Justices Pradeep Narhari Deshmukh and Shyam Babu Gautam.
Bank of India on April 14 had filed insolvency proceedings against Future Retail for non-payment of dues. Future Retail owes banks Rs 5,322.32 crore as of March 31, according to Bank of India’s petition in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), a lawyer said. Lenders to the company include Union Bank of India, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and IDBI Bank, among others.
In 2019, Reliance Industries announced a $3.4 billion deal to acquire the Kishore Biyani-backed company’s retail, logistics, and warehouse assets. However, this snowballed into a legal battle with U.S. retailer Amazon, a stakeholder in Future Coupons, who opposed the deal.
In a stock exchange filing on April 23, Reliance Industries had said the $3.4 billion deal to take over the retail assets of Future Retail could not be implemented because the company's secured creditors had "voted against the scheme.”
While over 75 percent of Future Group's shareholders and unsecured creditors had voted in favour of the deal with Reliance, 69.29 percent of secured creditors rejected the deal and the remaining 30.71 percent voted in favour of it, Future Retail said in an exchange filing on April 22.
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